It’s nice to take a break from infectious disease news to think about the dessert you want to bake. Many people take time to seek out healthy substitutes for cookies and pies, but sometimes the advertised “better option” isn’t really better — it’s just different and sometimes it is even worse. This can be true even for all-natural products that deftly sidestep the arguments against processed foods or sugar substitutes invented in a laboratory.
Many of us have learned that margarine isn’t a great substitute for butter. Over the past few decades, doctors and dietitians have done a great job vilifying butter because of its saturated fat. Along came a not-so-tasty margarine, which had less saturated fat but more trans fats. Science slowly discovered margarine wasn’t any better and the food scientists created modified margarines and now “plant-based butter” touting the benefits of being animal-free — a great selling point for vegans and a nice example of niche marketing. A close look at their ingredients and they read just like margarine with a few caveats — the best ones avoid trans fat. Which gets back to the question, is margarine truly a great substitute for butter? It surely isn’t more natural — read the ingredients — but it does avoid cows and cholesterol.
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Read the ingredients: The best plant-based butters avoid trans fatThe better alternative for that fresh, hot bread is olive oil and that falls into the Mediterranean diet.
Natural sugar substitutes fill the shelves a few aisles down from the butter. The idea of raw cane sugar as a more-natural alternative to regular sugar is appealing, but it is the same exact composition — it is all sucrose, a molecule comprised of glucose and fructose subunits.
Another natural alternative is honey. Honey has been shown to have beneficial — albeit minor — effects on cholesterol and markers of inflammation, and it doesn’t cause as fast of a spike in blood sugar levels as white sugar. However, honey has the same glucose and fructose as white sugar and it has about 25% more calories per tablespoon. So if you are trying to get the health benefits of switching over to honey and watching your calorie intake, you should limit yourself to about half as much honey as you would sugar.
Right next to honey is agave syrup. For factoid aficionados, the sugars of the agave plant are fermented to make tequila. This all-natural sweetener is not better than sugar, in fact, when the agave sap is processed into syrup it increases the ratio of fructose to glucose akin to creating high-fructose corn syrup — the very thing so many people are now trying to avoid). Fructose is frowned upon because it is only metabolized by the liver and when the liver is overloaded it converts fructose to fat. High fructose intake can increase your bad cholesterol and increase insulin levels (think: prediabetes).
For bakers, many recipes still taste good with the added sugar reduced by a third. Another option is trading sugar for mashed bananas or applesauce in equal amounts.
The best way to enjoy something sweet is to eat nature’s candy: fresh fruit. The fibers in fresh fruit lower the blood sugar spike and delivers vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
The take-home lesson is that the healthiest foods don’t have an ingredients list.
Dr. Salvatore Iaquinta is a head and neck surgeon at Kaiser Permanente San Rafael and the author of “The Year They Tried To Kill Me.” He takes you on the Highway to Health every fourth Monday.
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July 20, 2020 at 02:02AM
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The healthiest foods don’t have an ingredients list - Marin Independent Journal
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